Commissioned work of a book cover. This one features a space battle and also a whole lot of background, which was used for a seamless cover. The image is heavily cropped due to the most of it being nothing more than empty space with two suns and some nebulas.

I would say there are a couple of problems with this. There is no sense of movement, especially from the fighters. Everything looks like it is just sitting there. Secondly I find it a bit too busy and I would consider cutting out two of the fighters.

Yeah partly it's due to the book's layout and the fact that the whole piece is actually a few times bigger with a lot of stars and background stuff around it. I had to hold back on motion blur, explosion glows and such because it had to fit between the cover's elements such as name, author and such.

Thanks There are sort of tubes around its edge that fire more constant beams, while the turrets around the ship have pulse rounds. I guess you could compare it to a phaser from Trek, but with a rotatable firing port.